A blog showcasing the characters, vehicles, items and pretty much anything else that involves Time Travel in DC comics.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Batman Arkham Knight Play-through

I was curious to see if this was better than the two sentence spoiler sounded. I watched this online so thoughts for it below.

SPOILERS AHEAD

There's TONS to do in this game which is a plus. The only thing that looks like it'd annoy me gameplay-wise is the fights with tanks.

There are so many Easter eggs for fans that you wouldn't catch unless you were a fan of the comics. Things for other games too but I haven't watched all of those and I haven't played them because of money reasons.

The freak outs with Joker in Batmans' head was genius. It adds a level of tension and is done really well. Having Joker inside someone's' head was done in Batman Beyond but we never saw it from that persons' POV.

Barbara and Tim were dating?! What is it with people pairing her up with everyone? Remember BTAS where they had all that Barbara/Bruce stuff? I don't like her with Dick but I rather have her dating him than anyone else in the family.

I've seen people complain about others coming off like their incompetent but Nightwing is actually called reckless more than once. I don't recall the others being called that.

Batman is a jackass. Some of it is understandable but if he allowed others to help him early on a lot of this wouldn't have happened.

How could Batman not see that old guy (Henry) was a Joker? Even if he didn't find anything wrong the guy didn't want to be there then Batman suddenly decides to give him all this power to help them out?

I knew Oracle wasn't really dead.

Having Jim around when Jason unmasked was very distracting. He shouldn't have been there. I also watched most of this game with commentary from the players and changed to a playthrough without it once they started mocking Jasons' emotional moments. That took away from the scene and proved this take lacked the more personal feel of UTH.

Did Joker and Harley know Batmans' secret ID? Because knowing Jason Todds' name seems like a big clue and given what we were shown there's no way Joker would have known from Jason himself who was still somewhat defiant after 6 months of torture.

I don't like this version of the story that has Jason running off to kill Joker as ROBIN. Despite what later writers tried to retcon characters into claiming Jason was only interested in saving his mother not challenging Joker,

I admit smiling when Jason took off the "cowl" and pulled down the Red Hood.

I just realized this version of Jason can't even take on Batman in a fight. At most they go at it for a few seconds before Jason leaves. Everything else is car fights and sniper mode. Jason really got screwed over here.

The audiolog with Jason talking to Barbara and protecting her was one of the truly in character moments in the whole story. More on this below.

Yes Jason saves Bruce but we never get closure which is the main reason I wasn't a fan of the ending.

I know a lot of people wanted an Arkham game with Jason and I get that they didn't want to retell UTH so they changed things around. But they obvious saw how emotionally charged UTH was and wanted to have Jason fight Bruce. The problem is execution and I don't think they truly captured Jasons' personality. As stated above they put the blame on Jason by having him go rogue as Robin to kill Joker. There's only two reasons to do this: 1.) this takes the blame off Bruce (at least a little) & 2.) to show he was "always bad." Either way it's bullshit that takes away from his character.

When I first heard this I thought he was Red Hood, was captured and turned into Arkham Knight which compounded his trauma. In a way this is a worse fate than his death in the comics since at least that was over quicker. Jason was defiant the whole time and protected his mom to the end despite her betraying him. This Jason is broken in a way that's hard to watch if you're a Jason fan. He doesn't even fight back when he's let go in the second flashback. Hell this is basically like what happened in Batman Beyond Jokers' Return except Tim was more together than this. Seeing Jason Todd branded and broken to the point he's complying to Jokers' commands is sickening. It was probably meant to be but its not something I ever want to see.

Also, I don't care what reason they gave for Bruce not finding Jason the fact that he replaced him without proof he was dead makes Bruce a bigger asshole. It's obvious that seeing proof of it is what broke Jason. Still this was done better in RHLD when Jason silently reacts to see pictures of Tim.

Maybe I missed some dialogue but did Joker just let Jason go after a year? What happened there?

Anyway this story ended on a disappointing note but mostly for Jason Todds' portrayal. On the bright side I technically got my wish that Kevin Conroy voicing a conversation with Jason and more exposure for the character. Despite what some claim Jason is criminally underused, more so than all of Bruces' other kids except Cass. (Stephanie isn't his kid.)

2 comments:

The game is entertaining if only because the formula is near perfect (although the batmobile is more a hidrance than a perk) but the writing is really weak, relying more on shock value that proper development.

Jason as the Arkham Knight is painfully misused and is really hard to connect with his plight. I'm a huge Jason fan and even I got sick of the constant whining and empty threats.

The voice acting was great, especially for the audiolog with Barbara and Jason. It needed more moments like that. Exactly, they didn't develop Jasons' story enough and in the end we only see him for one bit in the end after his breakdown. It took away his dignity.

Kevin Conroy is a great voice actor but because of the writing I never got the impression Batman cared about Jason. UTRH set up the loss better, we saw Bruce react to the death and get pissed off by Joker mentioning the murder.

The only thing that really felt like they got Jason right for an extended period was the DLC and even that was short.